Hey guys, after being contacted by Frankie he's given me permission to start a thread to help out some of you guys who are contemplating building your own wheels.Just to clarify, this will be all about building techniques, parts selection, lacing patterns and other technical stuff to help out any newbie builders who want to have a go, so please forgive me if it starts off looking like any posters are trying to tell you how to suck eggs or something.Oh, and let's try not to argue or bicker about differences of opinion? I know there's loads of you guys out there who are contemplating doing your own and I'm sure the vast knowledge base from some of the guys who come on here would be useful so now it's all in one place and hopefully it'll give some people the help they need to unravel the tech jargon and get on with it.Lets see how it evolves.

Great idea! I built 7 or 8 wheels by myself, the first ones where sketchy and needed retensioning, but then I got better and the last ones are going strong, still true after a lot of use and abuse.

The most difficult part for me is to reach perfect roundness, I still can't get it so good. I once got a wheel from a good mechanic and it was so incredibly round... there must be a trick to reach this result. I try to start by threading nipples by hand the same number of turns, but I think this is not the trick as it didn't worked that well for me

CC, I don't think you have to do anything on them that you wouldn't do with a normal hub. The holes are evenly spaced by the looks of it.
If I were you I'd sit down with a clean hub and a vernier and make a drawing of both flange hole centres as well as working out the estimated flange widths from the centre of the hub, double check it's right and make sure your proposed lacing pattern means the spokes will leave the flanges at the right angle especially on the drive side.
You may end up having to do a little bit of guestimating on where the spoke end sits but if your using internal nipples you'll have a little bit of tolerance anyway.
Nice bit of recycling Colo! I love all that sort of stuff, kind of makes me feel warm inside knowing not only do you have a nice hubset your also helping save the planet.

Frenk, I normally focus on roundness first, lube or threadlock the nipples then get them on so the thread is level with the nipple top, go round doing 2 or 3 half turns with a screwdrive/nipple driver at a time.
The little portable jig I started off with has got a roundness guage on it to help you out and although I have Park stand now I still use my little flexy jig sometimes as it's easy to carry to races and events/shows stuff like that.
That roundness guage made it all a lot easier at first, just mount the wheel, push up the stop and tighten wherever the rim touches the stop, tighten the guage and repeat. I normally try to get the roundness with the DS spokes first then start pulling the dish into the wheel and tuing it as I go, you can adjust the roundness once you've trued it but it's easier to do beforehand. Here's a pic of my very first jig I bought a few years ago, it's a Minoura one and came in a kit with a dishing stick and a spoke key to get you started, it was only cheap but still can produce a decent wheel that is just as good as one built on my bloody great heavy thing.

I've been trying to build up a powertap wireless to a Kinlin 200 or 270. Any suggestion on how to even the spoke tension from the driveside to the non drive side. I am guessing changing the patterns like 3x on drive side and 2x on nondrive side would it? I am not sure.

I weigh 155 lbs if that helps and it's 32 holes. Also thinking of going with sapim because of price here on starbike.

My top-tip this week is a Sapim Nipple Driver. What a boon that thing is for twiddling your nips up to the bottom of the slot. Even works on 50mm rims with external nips.
There is a little nip that fits the hole and you simply wind them up really fast and the head pops out the slot cleanly when the spoke comes up to the slot.
If you've your lengths right, the wheel will be nice and round and true before you bring it up to tension.

I've got a question on dishing, what variables determine the amount of dish a rear wheel needs? I have no problems with a front wheel, but I just can't figure out how much for a rear wheel.

Thanks,

Ian in SD

There is no standard, it is however much is needed to make the wheel centered in the stand and bike. One thing to consider is most stands are not centered unless they are either a high end stand or the user centered it right before the build. The Park TS2 is notorious for coming out of center after every build.

Ian, the dish in the rear wheel is defined by the position of the flanges.
The older style wheels that used a narrower cassette needed less dish than a modern wheel so it was less of a problem, obviously track or fixie wheels are even simpler as they have very little or no dish at all.
What you need to get the wheel dished correctly is a dishing stick, it's a tool that you use the check that the rim is central compared to the outer edges of the hub, you check one side, lock it in position, turn the wheel round and compare it to the other side.
The dishing stick comes with most of the begginers kit type jigs.

I've been trying to build up a powertap wireless to a Kinlin 200 or 270. Any suggestion on how to even the spoke tension from the driveside to the non drive side. I am guessing changing the patterns like 3x on drive side and 2x on nondrive side would it? I am not sure.

I weigh 155 lbs if that helps and it's 32 holes. Also thinking of going with sapim because of price here on starbike.

Doing various lacing patterns bewteen sides does not do anything to help balance the tension difference. The tension difference is 54% on a Powertap hub and there is no pattern that will make up the additional 46% that you need to balance the 2 sides.

You can use a 1x or radial pattern with all of the elbows on the outside of the flange on the drive side and that will raise the non drive tension by about 10 to 15%. It raises the non drive side tension by making the affective flange width on the drive side further out not because of the differences in crosses.

The first thing I'd say is to think about what you're doing. Make sure you have everything you need. Then decide how anal you want to be about building your wheel.

My tip to most people just starting out, is to go to their local shop and buy a complete cheap wheel. Take it home, disassemble it and re-build it several times just for practice.

If you are comfortable with that, then move on to building your own wheels for riding.

I have a couple tips that may differ from what others are doing and you're free to argue with me if you disagree. I don't claim to be the one who knows it all, and my biggest focus is on the mechanics of it and not on the theory of it.

If you want to be anal and you want to build a good wheel, you must have a decent truing stand(doesn't have to be super expensive, but you should try to get one that is stiff) it will make truing a bit easier. You also will want a tension-ometer.

A nipple driver works and is handy, but for new guys, I don't recommend a fixed dimension one like the Sapim. The reason for this is that not all spokes have their threads cut/rolled the same, particularly in a rear wheel when you are dealing with two different length spokes which come from different production batches.

Take a look at some spokes at random of different lengths. You'll notice that some have 9mm of threading, some have 10mm, some are 10.45mm and another is 10.2mm. My point is that they are all different. Some are close some are not. For an experienced wheelbuilder this isn't a very big deal, it simply takes a couple minutes longer when tensioning a wheel. However one thing that is more consistent in spokes is the total length of the spoke. So if you start with a nipple driver that has an adjustable depth pin you take out the initial uneven tightening you get by using the last thread as a stopping point. There are several out there, the one that comes to mind first is the problem solvers holy driver. You set the tip depth to whatever you want(something close to the first thread on the first spoke you do) and then as you tighten each spoke, the tip will hit the spoke as it comes into the nipple and actually push the nipple driver off of the nipple. This ensures that each spoke/nipple is started and equal distance from the end of the spoke which produces a more consistent starting point and makes for a wheel which requires less attention to rounding.

frenk wrote:

The most difficult part for me is to reach perfect roundness, I still can't get it so good. I once got a wheel from a good mechanic and it was so incredibly round... there must be a trick to reach this result. I try to start by threading nipples by hand the same number of turns, but I think this is not the trick as it didn't worked that well for me

Thinking like that will get you into trouble. You have to remember, no wheel build, by anyone is ever going to be perfect. If it's perfectly round, spoke tension won't be perfectly even. If spoke tension is perfectly even, it won't be perfectly round. That's due to the fact that tolerances in rim manufacturing are not perfect. Some wheels are definitely going to be round or truer than others. A good example is that a carbon wheel will almost never be as true as an aluminum. This is because carbon has more variation in the width of it's sidewalls than an alloy. The idea is to balance things as best as possible. I've had wheels were at one point the rim got wider on both sides, and plenty that were less round at the seam.

As legs said, lube is important. I personally don't like thread lock to start a wheel with(I use spoke freeze at the end) but to each their own. I like spoke prep or linseed oil on the threads of the spoke. Another often overlooked lube point is the eyelet of the rim. A drop of grease on there reduces friction from the nipple/rim interface.

Some suggest you true and round the rear wheel using only the drive side spokes, but not at full tension. Then once that's done, you'll add the NDS spokes and use those to dish. As you dish you'll bring the DS spokes up to tension. Some people like this method, others don't.

Another trick for bringing tension up without taking a rim out of round is to tighten only every third spoke rather than each one in order. By doing this you tension only one of each spoke of each set and in order.

Also, use small turns when bringing tension up.

theredmiata wrote:

I've got a question on dishing, what variables determine the amount of dish a rear wheel needs? I have no problems with a front wheel, but I just can't figure out how much for a rear wheel.

Dish is simply of saying a rim should be centered between the axle ends. However because you have a cassette on one side of the hub, you have to have flanges that are unevenly spaced from the center of the hub. So when you rim is centered on on the hub(from end to end) it looks like a dish because the rim does not sit centered between the flanges. I hope that makes sense. I guess a simplier way of saying it would be to simply make sure your rim is centered. Don't think about dish just think about getting it centered as you would with a front.

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